What took months of work for Oklahoma football coaches was undone in a matter of minutes with an online video Sunday night.
Jean Delance is a junior and a highly touted offensive tackle. At 6-5, 270 pounds, he is in the Scout 150 of the top players in the country for the class of 2016. He has offers from Texas, TCU, Auburn, LSU, South Carolina and Miami, among others. He committed to the University of Oklahoma shortly after finishing his junior season last November. Even with other offers pouring in, and with him becoming one of the most sought after recruits from the state of Texas, he remained adamant that he was committed to the Oklahoma Sooners. Delance took an unofficial visit to the Norman campus for Oklahoma’s Junior Day this past weekend. He even tweeted comments and pictures from some of the fun he was having.
Then he went home to Mesquite, Texas Sunday night and saw the racist Oklahoma fraternity video that was quickly going viral and becoming headline news across the country. On Monday night he notified the Oklahoma coaching staff that he was de-committing from the Sooners.
The video was of Oklahoma University Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members on a party bus, repeating over and over a scripted, racist chant as they departed for their house’s “date night.”
With the video quickly going public, the national chapter of SAE has stripped the Oklahoma chapter of its membership. University of Oklahoma president David Boren has severed the school’s ties with the fraternity and the Tri-Delta sorority is investigating the incident, as some of its members were on the party bus.
Sooners head coach Bob Stoops quickly went into damage control mode, denouncing the racist chants and several of his players took to their social media pages to say the fraternity’s behavior was not representative of the school as a whole. It was too late to salvage the recruiting of Delance, though.
He posted on social media Monday that the decision had, “nothing to do with the staff or team,” and he went on to say that was reopening his recruitment for, “personal reasons.” When contacted by Bob Przyblo of Scout.com, Delance admitted to being disturbed by the racist video and that because of it, he was no longer committed to the Sooners. Other coaches acted swiftly on Oklahoma’s demise. Within hours of his decommitment from Oklahoma, Delance had a new scholarship offer from the University of Alabama. With Delance gone, Stoops now has only one verbal commit for next year’s class.
